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DECEMBER 2007
LINDA LEE
SUMMARY
Council discussed budgetary implications for the Society in readiness for the budget and business planning exercise to be undertaken in January 2008.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) remain adamant that it will not review the decision to grant Bostalls a waiver and thus far have not indicated how it is proposed that Bostalls will be regulated.
The implementation of Visualfiles at the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) has been halted. The project was over budget and developed to such a degree of complexity that it cannot be sensibly taken forward. The new group IT director is undertaking a review as to how the problems with the LCS systems can be addressed.
Report of Des Hudson Chief Executive of the Law Society
It was reported that this year, there had been an additional 6,250 practicing certificate fees collected and there are now approximately 107,000 practising certificate fee holders on the roll. For the purpose of the budget, the Society will assume zero growth for next year.
There have been difficulties in implementing visual files into the Legal Complaints Services. An urgent review by the group IT director has identified significant problems with the implementation, which has been significantly delayed.
The Legal Complaints Service submitted a proposition that a further £1.5 million pounds be made available to complete the implementation by the early autumn of 2008. This would be in addition to the £2.5 million already spent. The system as proposed would require an annual spend of £500,000 per annum. The difficulties have arisen because of the level of bespoking carried out on the implementation and the difficulties in the system at accepting standard upgrades without further work being carried out.
Although the Legal Complaints Service indicated that the implementation would deliver business benefits, the Society did not find that these benefits were quantifiable. Accordingly, the project has been withdrawn. There will be a lessons learned project carried out the new group IT manager to determine a new way forward.
Bostalls
The SRA have indicated that they will not suspend the operation of the waiver that they considered to have been granted on the basis of full consideration of the relevant evidence and in the public interest notwithstanding the representations of the Law Society. The Society is considering what if any further steps can be taken.
PACE-CODE C (police station advice))
The society has briefed MPТs on the Home OfficeТs proposed changes to code of PACE. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) now wants CDS Direct to handle all cases where only telephone advice is funded.
The Law Society have concerns that
The detained person is denied their right to their chosen solicitor in every case falling within the remit of CDS Direct
No account has been taken of the need of clients from an ethnic minority community to instruct a solicitor who speaks their language and understands relevant cultural issues
The LSC is requiring that all requests for publicly funded advice go to the Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC) but if the client is paying privately the police will contact the solicitor direct. This means that the police must involve themselves inappropriately in the nature of the retainer between the client and the solicitor. The new procedures make no allowance for the possibility of alternatives or just pro bono work by the clientТs own solicitor or third party funding.
Where a request for advice in serious cases is put through to the DSCC and the call centre fails to contact the chosen solicitor, the duty solicitor will be sent out. Because of the change to the legal aid contract under which firms work, the detained person will not be entitled to change their own solicitor unless and until they are charged, which in serious cases could be many weeks and several visits to the police station later.
The Law Society believes that parliament has never approved such a fundamental change to the rights of detained people which have come about as a collateral effect of administrative changes of the Legal Services Commission
The regulations will be debated in parliament in the next four weeks
Report of the SRA Board
The only point of note was that Council were invited to approve amendments to the solicitorsТ account rules 1998 necessitated by provisions in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 that replaced Court of Protection receivers with Court of Protection deputies.
The proposed changes were of purely technical nature and were approved by the Council in full. The amendments will take effect as soon as they have been concurred by the Master of the Rolls.
(A full copy of this paper is available on request).
In response to a question from a council member, Peter Williamson declined to answer whether or not the granting of the waiver to Bostalls would led to them regulating Bostalls and if so, whether or not Bostalls would be charged a fee for this service or alternatively whether it was their intention that Bostalls would be unregulated in this work.
A written answer was promised in due course.
Report of the Chair of the Board of the Legal Complaints Service
The Chair, Professor Saggar reported that the LCS was looking ahead to the next planning year, which begins on the 1st April 2008. They are suggesting to Ms Manzoor that they would be in favour of fewer targets and would prefer to concentrate on timely responses and getting the complaint handling right. They also want to look at the cost per complaint.
For this reason, they cannot submit a budget to the Council at the present time.
The LCS is continuing with their deliberations regarding publishing complaints. The LCS remains aware of the risk of unintended consequences such as reduced access to justice and would look at ways of addressing these. Professor Saggar indicated that the LCS would consider researching the likelihood of risks against potential benefit to clients. It was also acknowledged that to publish in this way would be setting a gold standard of complaint handling and not practised by similar complaints handling bodies.
The Chief Executive of the Legal Complaints Service indicated that on average 22 hours was spent per case although there is no time recording system in place and this was a crude measure obtained by dividing the working hours available by the number of complaints handled. However the Chief Executive recognised that this was very high and is seeking to reduce it.
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